Shrimp Creole

You may have noticed a definite lack of CEiMB recipes lately. It seems that every week I set out with the best of intentions only to find that I never actually get that week’s recipe made. I was actually really excited about last week’s Chicken Sate with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce, but I just didn’t get around to making it. I think the long list of ingredients convinced me it would not be a quick or easy meal, and, lately, I’ve been all about the quick and easy. In fact, we’ve been eating tons of fast food, PBJ sandwiches, and frozen pizza… that’s how quick and easy it’s been around here lately. Again this week I set out to make a CEiMB recipe; since I was excited about last week’s chicken and convinced we would not like this week’s chicken salad wraps, I decided I would put the chicken with peanut sauce back on the menu for this week and post about it. Well, that just didn’t happen either.

Have you ever had a stretch of time where you just felt literally overwhelmed by life? Like no matter what you did, you just could not get caught up on anything? These past few weeks, I feel like I’ve just been treading water: moving frantically and getting nowhere. For the most part, I like to keep this blog recipe-centric. I will interject anecdotes here and there that hopefully let you know more about me and also relate to the recipe somehow; just as I like to learn about all of you, hopefully you want to learn a bit about me as well. Isn’t that the beauty of blogs – it’s another way to connect with people. What I don’t like to do though is to treat this as a journal, to air all my personal dramas or struggles. Lately it just feels increasingly difficult to keep the two things separate because the more frantic life gets, the less I actually cook which leads to less posts, and so my personal crap gets intermingled with the food. (Maybe the use of the word crap there wasn’t the best choice… I mean, no one wants to think about crap mingling with their food, right?)

I’m still not planning to come here and cry about everything that’s going wrong in my life or list off the hundred things I feel like I need to get done before bed tonight, but I feel like, since I do share so much of myself in this blog, to not even acknowledge that there is drama and a huge to-do list would be less than authentic. So there it is blog world: I’m not perfect. No surprises there, right? I mean, I did used to eat SPAM as a child so obviously there is something not quite right about me.

And, with that, back to the food.

Luckily I made this recipe a few weeks ago, before we enjoyed our amazing dinner at Henry’s, because I am sure it could not have stood up to comparison against the far superior Cajun cuisine we ate last weekend were we to have eaten it this week. For once, I actually followed the recipe exactly. I wish I had made it a little spicier, but Ryan thought it was the perfect level of heat. Other than differing opinions on what constitutes spicy, we both agreed this was delicious. This, paired with rice from the rice cooker, came together pretty quickly. It’s not quite as effortless as dinner from a brown bag, but it would definitely be a good weeknight meal.

Stir in shrimp and simmer 5 minutes. Stir in scallions, parsley and lemon juice; simmer 1 minute. Remove bay leaf. To serve, spoon 1/2 cup of rice into each of 4 bowls and top each with about 2 cups of shrimp creole.